


And time yet for a hundred indecisions

by thewickedkat



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Explicit Language, F/M, Gen, Navel-Gazing, Past psychological abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Self-Loathing, Unreliable Narrator, negative self-talk, past bullying, past emotional abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-11-02 00:20:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17877563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewickedkat/pseuds/thewickedkat
Summary: Vee did a stupid thing. She beats herself up because it's what she knows.





	And time yet for a hundred indecisions

**Author's Note:**

> i'm putting a Content Warning here at the beginning for loads of self-flagellation and mentions of Vee's past not-so-happy marriage to Nate. he was a poop to her and she's still a bit stuck in that mindset. nothing terribly graphic, but it might not be everyone's cup of tea.
> 
> also, this might make little sense without reading its sister work, 'And should I then presume?' first.

There was a difference between the silence of the world at large and the silence of others. Vee had learned that long ago, but apparently the universe had decided it was time for a refresher lesson.

The world’s silence was easier, had less weight. It wasn’t difficult to let that silence sluice around a body like a stream around a stone because it wasn’t ever really quiet--it was full of wind and birds, the creaks and groans of trees and houses. Before, it had had the whine of jet turbines and the _whupwhupwhup_ of vertibird rotors, the hiss of car tires on asphalt and the gabble of television cartoons through open windows.

The silence of people has its own singular gravity, a strange spaghettification of time and space, and Vee waits for some kind of cue from Mac, some kind of stimulus she can respond to. Her hands occupy themselves with his rifle--when was the last time he stripped it down and cleaned it fuckin’ _properly,_ anyway?--and her right eye stings where she’d gotten soap in it.

Stupid idea, that. Stupid to let Curie try, stupid to think it would lead to anything good. Not that _that_ was the goal, anyway; that notion smacks of mind-games and Vee has never been interested in pulling that type of stunt. No, the makeup was for _her,_ she reminds herself. Curie just had agreed to it because she had steadier hands than Vee, and it wasn’t a total lie when she’d told Mac that Curie had been interested in the sociological ramifications of conventional feminine activities--

_Jesus_ she can’t even bullshit herself.

So she waits, stomach tying itself in knots as Mac leisurely drinks his beer and flexes his fingers, working the sew-cramps out of them. She waits for _some_ thing--she’s not quite sure what, exactly--to react to because being _pro_ active was what got her into this coil-tense mess in the first damn place.

Vee hates this game, hates that she’s familiar with it, the free-swing of sick anticipation like there’s another shoe to be dropped. Nate had been tops at this sort of thing, at watching her shrink inside herself like a slug caught in a salt-ring, herded carefully with careless words and heedless insults tossed about like the world’s worst party favours. Nate needled and poked and prodded, watching for soft parts she’d inadvertently exposed and used her own self against her, turning her feelings into ammunition.

He’d been even worse after he’d been discharged, words made of wasp-stings and bitter spite, and everything she’d done or said was somehow wrong or _lacking._

_Why bother,_ she thinks, hands working on autopilot, gun oil working its way under her nails, into the whorls of her fingertips. It isn’t as if she is noticed, as if she is _seen,_ and somehow that hurts worse than Nate’s words did so long ago. At least she knew how to respond to that, how to fortify her defences and get her walls up. How to tiptoe round Nate’s bad moods, how to be quiet when her self was too loud. Most of the time, then, it was better to be unseen, to blend into the background.

Mac’s seeming indifference is something she has no response for, lines delivered to an empty theatre, her effort echoing and hollow. She does not know how to respond to it. That momentary lip-curl of his, though, when he’d first noticed the makeup--that, she knew. _That,_ she could have worked with; the beginnings of open contempt, the sneer that presages scornful laughter. She’d done that particular dance with Nate and still knows the steps well, even if she hates it.

But Mac sits, taking thoughtful sips of his beer, and says nothing.

Vee shifts uncomfortably, the concrete suddenly too hard for her bony ass. The tension inside her turns brittle, whatever spring that’s been ratcheted in her chest threatening to overstretch and release her own embarrassment. Only it would take the form of vitriol and acidity, a pathetic attempt to obfuscate her own insecurity and smallness in the face of Mac’s scrutiny and dismissal.

_Fuck, I’ve been in therapy too damn long,_ she thinks sourly, and forces her hands to work faster.

In her peripheral vision, Vee watches him, trying to divine any kind of reaction in his body language, any sort of discernible change in his emotional weather. But he just sits, blithe and loose-limbed as the day is long, and her shoulders are starting to ache from holding herself tight, reined in and corralled. But at the same time old habits die hard, and she is reluctant to get up and leave, find some other task to take care of--not waiting to be dismissed, but... _waiting_ for something, some signal. Acknowledgement. Resolution, even though there is clearly no conflict.

Sometimes she feels as if she is trying to speak an entirely different language, one learnt from bits of graffiti and the back of a cereal box. Vee has never been fluent in flirting, never put out the ‘correct’ signals that say _Yes, I am interested_ without coming across like a creeper. That liminal space between confident and coy has never been her bailiwick; she has either scared people off or been so subtle they missed what she was intending all along.

Apparently, two hundred years has not given her an edge when it comes to the finer points of fancying someone.

_This isn’t about him,_ she reminds herself fiercely, and slides the action on Mac’s rifle back and forth a little too emphatically. _I wanted to feel pretty, even if only for a moment._ Maybe if she tells herself enough times she’ll make it a truth.

Pretty: a word almost foreign to her, something she has always secretly _(shamefully)_ wanted to be, but not a quality she can give herself. A word seldom applied to her Before and probably just as rarely nowadays. She wants it in spite of all her many rough edges, a tiny secret shoved down deep within her, because _pretty_ means _soft,_ and _soft_ means _weak._

When Curie had shown Vee her own face in the mostly-whole mirror once she was finished, something inside Vee had loosened, uncurled and gone languid, like a knot in a muscle finally worked out. So strange, how a bit of charcoal and a thin brush and a young synth’s doctor-certain hands could make her different, could tease out some hidden allure Vee hadn’t seen in herself since she played dress-up with Diana and Amelia all those years ago. Just two simple lines around her eyes had given her an inquisitive and somehow relaxed and _limpid_ expression, and Vee hoarded that feeling, tucked it next to the yearning for _pretty_ in the vault of her heart, and she had kissed Curie’s blushing cheek in thanks.

_If it was only for yourself,_ a small, spiteful voice inside her whispers, _then why did you wash your face?_ The voice sounds suspiciously like Nate, his same mocking tone, the same smug inflection that never fails to make her curdle. Seems to make her shrivel inside herself the way a dog will cringe when whapped on the nose with a newspaper. _Trying to make yourself into something you’re not. A pig in lipstick is still a pig._

Without being aware of it, Vee hunches over the rifle, an embarrassed bow to her spine, trying to compact her too-boyish frame into a shape that falls below some imagined sight-line.

No. Better this way, a clean face and no frills, no fripperies. Nothing to emphasise all the things she isn’t. Nothing to make her seem ridiculous or attention-seeking. Better to let her hands work, just clean Mac’s rifle and let the action speak for her, not her stupid face and all its sharp angles, all its dark circles under the eyes. Easier to be General Vee, ADA Vee--or even just _Vic,_ at least to Nicky--rather than chase a pipe-dream of femininity. What use is it, anyway, in the wasteland? Paper dolls, that’s what; old-world blues singing a siren song that echoes in the hollows of skyscrapers, luring people like her to loneliness and a never-ending feeling of being found wanting.

Mac gets to his feet, suddenly, startling her. She had almost forgotten he was still there, so deep inside her own self-loathing.

‘You want another beer, Boss? That hit the spot.’ He tilts his empty bottle to her own, growing warm next to her knee. That, she _had_ forgotten, a near-crime in this day and age when cold beer was a luxury.

‘Uh. No, I’m good. Thanks.’ _Boss._ That’s something to work with, the line between the two of them redrawn every time he utters it, although she’s not sure he even realises it. He has no reason to, after all, not with her ham-handed efforts at flirtation and come-hither facepaint.

Mac shrugs affably and saunters off toward Cait’s bar, where Buddy is no doubt driving the former brawler up the wall with his dad-jokes and whine-plodding gait, but the robot is worth its weight in cold drinks on hot days like this.

_Jesus, could you be any_ more _embarrassing?_ Nate hisses again, and Vee picks up her steel wool, scrubbing viciously at the nicks on the rifle’s barrel, wishing she could erase herself just as easily.

**Author's Note:**

> another title from 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock' by T.S. Eliot. what can i say, it fits these two.
> 
> as always, i bow down to the Writer's Block for the love and encouragement there. thank you and i love you all unconditionally.


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